Emily Giffin

I decided to read Something Borrowed just to fill up my time. I have a few friends who read, and enjoyed, these novels and had mixed reviews about the movie. Figuring Something Borrowed would be a quick and easy read, I gave it a shot. To be honest, I am sorry I wasted my time as it proved to be predictable and frankly, quite stupid.

Giffin creates one of the most screwed up and unrealistic friendship/relationship triangles in her novel, Something Borrowed. To begin, the characters are ridiculously stereotyped. Rachel is the traditional good girl who never steps out of line, a perfect contrast to her outlandish, wild, and attention-hogging best friend Darcy. The two are polar opposites and Giffin never really establishes a good reason for their friendship, except that they have been best friends for upwards of 20 years. The girls don’t really seem to like each other. At all.

From there, the most predictable and pretty silly ‘romantic’ storyline develops. Rachel and Dex (Darcy’s fiancée) realize they are in love with each other, regardless that Dex is engaged. The relationship goes up and down between jealousy, distress, and passion. I wasn’t buying it. Giffin writes very simply with the only extra details being quite dry and boring, like what the characters are wearing or eating. There was nothing that made me feel like Rachel and Dex were soul mates, just like there was nothing that made me feel like Rachel and Darcy actually liked each other. On the contrary, I felt that Rachel despised Darcy and the only moments where she wasn’t bashing her so-called best friend didn’t provide much clarity on why.

Something Borrowed was an easy beach-read that I didn’t particularly like. Romance novels just aren’t my cup of tea, and I really think I should stay away from them for the sake of my reading enjoyment.

“Something Borrowed”– Directed by Luke Greenfield

via IMDB.com

What I felt was stereotypical in the novel was heightened, times ten, in the movie. The casting was unsurprising. Typical Ginnifer Goodwin plays the goody two-shoes looking for love. Typical Kate Hudson playing the self-centered and loud hot girl in every aspect of the word. Nothing about this movie was new or nontraditional. The plot somewhat followed that of the mediocre novel but it was flat in terms of suspense or drama, and the acting was horrible (particularly Colin Egglesfield as Dex, who was basically just a Ken Doll who could talk.) However, despite all of the issues I had with the storyline in general, there were two things I liked about the movie much more than the book.

One: Ethan. This character seemed out of place to me in the novel. He wasn’t in the picture until the very end, and didn’t do much as a supporting character, besides bash Darcy. In the movie, he was my favorite from the beginning. John Krasinski brought a boyish charm and some funny one-liners to the screen. I wasn’t surprised by his devotion to Rachel expressed at the end, but I WAS disappointed that his confession ends there and is never discussed for the rest of the movie.

Second thing I liked: Rachel and Darcy meet again. Unlike the end of the novel where Rachel is wondering how if she will ever have a friendship with Darcy again, the movie provides some sort of closure. I liked that the two women meet on the streets of Manhattan and have a short interaction. This was something missing from the novel, but this may just be because it was part of a longer series (that I will not continue to read.)

In general, I didn’t enjoy the book or the movie. They were both boring and predictable and totally unrealistic. Save your time for something else!